Where does Ben get his money?

Remember when Ben went into his secret room and he had stacks of money in different currencies? He's also alluded to how he has access to immense wealth off the island. Lastly, we've seen the Others do a lot of off-island stuff that needed at least some modest funds for clothes, equipment, etc.

We know Ben came to the island as a child with no money. We know Richard came to the island with no money. We don't know how Jacob arrived on the island, but he doesn't seem like the kind of guy with a successful business somewhere.

I don't think this is a minor curiosity or an oversight. My best guess at this point is that the Jacob (at least) has the ability to time travel to any time and place he wants. With this ability, it's not hard to imagine being able to accumulate a large fortune with well-timed stock purchases or sports wager. Additional evidence for this would be Jacob being able to visit the candidates/Losties at different points in their life.

It would make no sense for them to be backed by Dharma since they killed off Dharma on the island.

What do you think? Did the Others get rich through time travel aided betting, or is there some other source behind their wealth?

He put it $100 in the time chamber with a note attached to invest in Microsoft. It got sent back to the 70's and instantaneously reappeared in the chamber as $100,000,000. Ben later tried to replicate this success through a temporal real estate scheme and caused the stock market crash of 2008.

That's a good thought. It's possible depending on how they get to the island, whether they can get off the island (and how), and their motivation for staying. I wouldn't think a 16 year old Ellie washed up on the island with a couple million bucks in her pocket.

This also leads me to the question: "what is up with Room 23?" It was built by Dharma for mind control experiments, but the Others were using it's on Alex's boyfriend. If the Others need brain washing to convert people to their cause, what did they do before Dharma arrived?

hah yeah. Eloise seems pretty loaded/influential now, maybe she was their accountant off island? Or she could have been funneling money to them.

You know how in LotR there's a huge appendix in the back that lists the history and mythology of the races? We need something like that for Lost. Who built the temple? Who built the Tawaret statue? Same thing with the Dharma initiative. Is it clear what their objectives were? The polar bears for example? Or what about Room 23, or the Pearl Station?

While the Dharma initiative were probably using Room 23 for research into brainwashing/sensory overload, were the Others using it as punishment? Like the bear cages with Sawyer and Kate. The Others under Ben did seem authoritarian, compared to how Richard ran the others with a more hands off approach seemingly.

That always just made sense to me. The cages were set up with that contraption to train them to work together for a goal. Plus it's kinda chilly down there with that frozen donkey wheel and polar bears like chilly.

Then again if it was just for the wheel, why wouldn't they just put a replica wheel in the cage and make that give them a treat instead?

The Others have several front companies (Mittlelos Bioscience, Dry Cleaners, etc.) and who knows how many more. They have an extensive network of on and off island contacts, who all apparently report to their leader. Given such a large organization and significant amounts of time, there's no reason they couldn't have tremendous financial resources.